yami
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: (Taking place in the Nagareboshi storyline.) Ryuichi is getting older, but he's having writer's block with songwriting. He thinks he's losing his touch, but Tatsuha tells him things he didn't realize about himself...


Disclaimer: Gravitation will never be mine, but I love it so much you might think it could be...Thank you Murakami-sama for such a manga! Shining Collection isn't mine either. (Yes, the poem is mine and so is Riki.)  
  
Full moons don't last long enough for beauty.  
  
A sigh conveys a person's thoughts  
  
Everyday, I feel and wish.  
  
If I became stronger, does this mean I'm unfeeling?  
  
If that's what it means, I want to grow with weakness.  
  
When I look in the mirror, I still can't see my own heart.  
  
I slash through it with my own hand, but there is still the darkness I can't reach.  
  
Only when I come out to the light  
  
Do my colors shine so brilliantly.  
  
So passionately.  
  
Things don't make sense in the world, myself included.  
  
But isn't something more beautiful  
  
When you can't fully understand it?  
  
Yami. (Darkness.)  
  
By miyamoto yui  
  
"Kumagorou BEAMU~!" I shouted at Riki as he smiled up at me while clapping his hands. But it came out more as a puff since he had thin gloves on since he had a rash problem.   
  
I gently pushed Kumagorou towards the top of his head and then he landed inside of the crib.   
  
"BUUU!" he tried to imitate as he pursed his lips together in concentration. Holding onto Kumagorou's right ear, he began to chew on it. He learned fast!  
  
"You've been eating ever thing lately," I said as I rubbed my chin. "Are you teething?"  
  
I began to laugh at myself as soon as I had dismissed my own comment.  
  
Riki blinked his wide eyes at me. "Hmm?"  
  
I shook my head as I softly patted his head. "Nothing, Niko."  
  
He then began to play with Kumagorou again.   
  
I looked at him and smiled as I leaned my arms on the railings of his crib.   
  
Niko...  
  
I nicknamed you because you're always so bouncy and happy...  
  
Genki like the sun...  
  
"Maybe you're like me..." I commented quietly to myself as I stared at his eyes.  
  
Already, he was taking up Tatsuha's characteristics. His eyes had this intense look to them even though he was only a baby. When he was concentrating on getting something on the other side of the room or trying to talking to you, you could just tell he was always trying his best.  
  
"Rui~!" he shouted to get my attention.   
  
"Oh!" I said, almost getting too lost in thought. "Niko!"  
  
He stood up and patted my cheeks. "Rui! Rui!"  
  
Riki laughed over and over because he always thought this was funny.  
  
He called me Rui because he couldn't say Ryuichi yet.   
  
I carried him and began to sing to him because it was time to go to sleep. "What do you want to hear today? Shining Collection?"  
  
He gurgled at me. "Okay, that's what the audience votes for!"  
  
I began to sing as I hugged him in my arms with his hands plastered on my chest along with his head.   
  
"Kiss shining..."   
  
By the end of the song, he was sleeping, but I still paced around the house to make sure he was sound asleep. Thank goodness he was.  
  
I kissed his head and slowly placed him in the crib with a blanket over him. "Oyasumi," I whispered to him  
  
I went to my song lyric room. I sat down and looked at my lucky notebook.  
  
"Nai..." I said as I stared at the blank page.   
  
I had been on writer's block before. It happened to me dozens of times. Only these days, it was harder and harder.  
  
When you tried to outdo yourself with every album, the goals became different and its effects were also changed. Just because you did something for a long time didn't mean that it became easier. The procedures were the same, and those were the things that were automatic.   
  
But not what you wanted to present. You message had to be something always different.  
  
I wasn't like one of those other artists that needed to shock people in order to get attention. Nor did I give anything that was half-assed.  
  
Giving myself more and more, I had to dig deeper and deeper. But how far could I go until I ran out of things to say?  
  
I was already thirty-four-years-old. How many angles could I take to life? Millions. How much could I grow? A billion times.   
  
But could I twist that enough? Will I ever run out of blood to give...  
  
This was what I always feared. I feared that one day I wouldn't be able to create.  
  
I wouldn't be able to touch people.   
  
That I would lose my ability to shine.  
  
But some part of me said, "No, you can't. There will always be someone who will change because you are changing."  
  
As I said to Shuichi in order to get through to him, I told him, "Pika pika, Shuichi!"  
  
I told him to shine!  
  
"The sun doesn't ever stop shining. It'll always be there," I told him months later. "It reaches and embraces everything it can. That is what music is.  
  
"You have penetrate until the core. If you don't, you won't ever get far."  
  
I held the black ballpoint pen in my hand, but I looked at the immaculate, white piece of paper.  
  
"I need something very different," I said to myself as I tapped the pen on the table.  
  
Fwoo.  
  
Suddenly, a large breath of cold air touched the back of my neck.   
  
"Tatsuha!" I shouted with a smile as I turned around.  
  
He kissed my neck as he said, "Tadaima!"  
  
"Okaeri!" I greeted back.  
  
He sighed as he put his bag down on the floor and sat next to me. Leaning his head on my shoulder, he heaved a heavy sigh. "Today was so tough! I've been at school for months, but I'm still having such a hard time!"  
  
I put my arm around him, but then, he suddenly pinned me to the ground.  
  
"I thought you were tired?" I asked him as I looked up at him.  
  
He smirked down at me. "Who said I was tired? How was your day, by the way?"  
  
"I put Riki to sleep. He gets more genki each day!" I laughed as Tatsuha smiled down at me while he began to kiss my neck. "I had to run after him because he kept on speed crawling through the whole house! I couldn't keep my eyes off him for a second until he took his nap!"  
  
"Ah? He's learning fast," he said in between the kissing. "I had to do another paper, right? Well, now I have to do another one for another class."  
  
"Maybe that's better than writing lyrics at the moment." I then pulled him over to kiss him on the lips. "Help me make lyrics again?"  
  
He raised his eyebrow. "Will I ever say 'no' to that?"  
  
This kind of discussion happened all the time if we were going to have anytime with one another...  
  
I breathed heavily as he looked down at me while my hands weakly hung onto the back of his wet neck. I smirked as sweat was pouring down on the floor. "Where do you get your energy, Tatsu?"  
  
He had been at school all day working on the last minute details of the paper.  
  
Tatsuha winked at me. "I steal chi from the sun. There's an endless supply."  
  
I sighed as I looked at him. I cupped one side of his face. He remained silent as I studied him more and more.  
  
He never questioned me whenever I became lost like this. Ever since I told him everything about myself, I didn't feel the gap anymore.  
  
I just thought I should learn more and more about Tatsuha.  
  
We are humans...  
  
We keep on changing, even we may think we're not...  
  
"What are you thinking about, Ryu?" He looked at me carefully. "Is there something wrong?"  
  
"Lyrics...they're not coming to me..." I said to him with a worried look. "I've never had writer's block this bad before."  
  
"It will come when you least expect it. Isn't that how it always is?" he asked me while trying to cheer me up.  
  
I smiled softly at him. "I just feel like I'm losing my touch."  
  
He blinked his eyes at me. "Excuse me? Did I hear this right?" he asked in English.  
  
He still made me laugh whenever he used English. It was so sexy!  
  
"You are always so hot whenever you do that..." I commented with a seductive smile.  
  
"The day you lose your touch...well...hmm." His eyes looked all over the place and I smiled even more. THAT was one of the looks Riki would give!  
  
"I have to think of a good example, Ryu." He then focused on me again. "It'll be the day that I stop trying. And that won't ever happen. You're proof of that."  
  
I took my hand away and looked at those eyes of his that always made me stop breathing as if they were taking my life away little by little and I didn't know they had.   
  
I pulled his head and we touched forehead to forehead.   
  
I was relieved.  
  
"Don't worry, Ryu. The day you stop giving your soul is the day you'll die," Tatsuha told me. "Even then, it'll live on. You're not just an idol. People follow you because you tell the truth about a paradox reality.   
  
"It's something that exists and yet it doesn't. But through your eyes, everyone understands it because you want to reach out to everyone.  
  
"I know that the most."  
  
"Tatsuha..." I was moved to tears. "You always say what I need to hear."  
  
I was right to choose this person to help me to grow better. To accept myself, as strange as I was. Because through him, I never saw what it meant to fall.  
  
That's why I'll always sing for you...  
  
You never let me down.  
  
The sun always shines because you let him, Tatsuha...  
  
--  
  
Early the next morning, I went out with an umbrella because it was sprinkling. It was a little foggy too. No one was around when I walked around and so I felt like I was the only one in the world at that moment.   
  
Because it was winter, it was really cold too, but strangely, I didn't feel it at all. I was warm all over.  
  
I looked at the familiar houses around ours. I had stared at them as if I had never seen them before.  
  
I had a strange habit of always going somewhere and always trying to find a scene that I loved the most. Here, I hadn't found that particular scene yet.  
  
So I kept on walking.  
  
I touched the trees and I kept on looking up at the sky. It became a bit brighter, but it was still so gloomy.  
  
Why did I go out for a walk at such an hour? It was habit, I guess.  
  
It wasn't because I was stressed or that I had cabin fever, but I felt that I needed to go out. I wanted to feel the stillness outside of myself because I was always going a million miles per hour inside of my head.  
  
The genki Ryuichi that ran into the studio.  
  
The quiet Ryuichi who thought too much about a lot of things.  
  
The persistent Ryuichi who never could rest until he had done something productive.  
  
Living each day with so many faces, and yet they were all me.  
  
Tatsuha accepted all of these different sides of myself. A person that I never thought had any worth to anyone.  
  
A person who, at times, even betrayed himself and his worth.  
  
But I bounced back.  
  
That was what I liked about myself.  
  
"Todokenai..." I mumbled while watching Shuichi's recording and Nuriko wondered what I was saying.  
  
It's not that we couldn't reach one another, Shuichi...  
  
It wasn't that at all.  
  
Everyone wants to rise to the top. I'm still not there myself.  
  
Selling albums doesn't mean anything unless you push yourself to the limit.  
  
Everyone has their own tower to reach. And at their own speed.  
  
You couldn't reach me not because I was better.  
  
You had your own tower and this was mine.  
  
I was heading back home as the rain began to fall a bit harder. As I took each step, I said, "Why am I keeping myself from the rain?"  
  
I was always running away because I didn't want to get sick, but why shouldn't I enjoy it?  
  
I closed my umbrella and looked up at the gray sky.  
  
At thirty-four years old, I knew what it meant to experience the beauty of the rain. It always represented tears to me, but as I stood there in the middle of the quiet street, I knew what it meant.  
  
Penetrate to the core...  
  
"The sun isn't only beautiful because it shines all the time, it's because there is rain," I said to myself as I had solved a great puzzle. "I need to feel more. I need to feel more..."  
  
Rain was the sun's tears.  
  
It can't be happy all the time.  
  
Yes, Tatsuha was this way to me.  
  
He hid me when I needed time to think...  
  
But rain is happiness in itself. It is the tangible liquid that you can touch.  
  
As the rain poured on my lips, I tasted them.  
  
There was salt. It tasted like salt.  
  
And I liked it.  
  
Then, I walked back with my head focused and staring straight in front of me. The rain fell over all over my body, but it felt warm, as if Tatsuha was holding me.  
  
I proudly walked onward while singing to myself,  
  
"Akaku nureta yubisaki ni...  
  
Subete wa suna ni naru...Shining make you cry..."  
  
The rain poured through my body and I closed my eyes sometimes.  
  
People always try to keep away from the rain. But why is that? They try to keep themselves dry, but for what? Was it really not to get sick?  
  
No, they had obligations to fulfill, places to go, and things to see. They had to keep up appearances in order to function each day. Women wore make-up and men wore suits.  
  
That was just how the world was.  
  
I was always afraid of the rain because I got sick easily. I didn't want to get wet, and yet I said I loved rain. I watched rain whenever it was outside of a building because the building was nice and warm.  
  
That wasn't the way to live, though.  
  
That's why I put my umbrella down today. I wanted love the rain and mean it.  
  
I wanted to feel it right through me.  
  
What I wanted the most right now was not to only touch people or make them feel something, but to tell them that if you couldn't count on yourself, then how could you count on other people?  
  
This was a hard and long lesson for me to learn. Touma, Nuriko, and Tatsuha helped me see that...  
  
That was what I saw through our son, Riki.  
  
He depended on me not because I was his parent, but that he trusted me.   
  
Blindly. I wanted that to grow. It would grow as the years went by...  
  
Those eyes.  
  
Their eyes were one and the same.  
  
Now, I saw myself through those eyes and I adopted them as my own. The confident person on stage was slowly breaking through the me outside of the range of the mic...  
  
Breaking through that barrier I put against myself...  
  
As soon as I got home, I went to get my clothes for a shower, but Tatsuha said for me to come next to him. He grabbed me.  
  
"Where'd you go?"  
  
"A walk...Let go so I can take a shower. I'm soaked all over and I'll get the bed wet."  
  
"I don't care. I want you here. And I want you now."  
  
Tatsuha held onto me so tightly. Maybe his inexperience was an advantage for him to be a bit more idealistic about life, but that was the bright vision he made me see. But in his view, he saw me in it, and he was also guiding me as I was helping him in his own life.  
  
Softly, he told me, "Don't think all by yourself. That's what you have me for..."  
  
He held onto my shoulders and wrapped his legs around my body in a lock. From behind me, he snuggled his chin at the crook of my neck. His fingers firmly held onto me.   
  
Quietly, we were like that for a long time.  
  
I could hear the smile on his face as he whispered to me through the gray darkness, "Ryu, sometimes you have to be selfish and keep something to yourself. But that's not like you. Once you have it, you share it with everyone. You're a little kid that way.   
  
"That's why I never stopped believing in you. Because you want to share, there's always something to come back to. This is one of your hidden, but true charms."  
  
"Tatsuha..." I bowed my head as my voice cracked a bit. I kissed his hands.  
  
You always knew what I needed to hear, did you know that?  
  
"You were never afraid of the truth and you were never afraid of hurting yourself because you knew it would make you better. This is why the Sakuma Ryuichi I know can be both a child and a man at the same time."  
  
"I told you not to worry, Ryu," Tatsuha said as he kissed my forehead.  
  
I pulled his arms and held his arms as best as I could. "I've still got so much to learn about myself, you, and Riki...about everything..."  
  
He nodded too. Then he said,  
  
"You always amaze me, Ryuichi.  
  
With every song, with ever album,  
  
You find more and more about yourself.  
  
That's why whenever I thought you were so far away from me, I listened to you.  
  
You weren't too far whenever I listened."  
  
I held onto to Tatsuha as I began to smile even wider with my eyes closed.  
  
"I was trying to get to you, but I was trying to get to myself too."  
  
"Don't be discouraged whenever you think you'll never get everything, Ryu."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because that is who you are. I like your messed up sense of reality that you present in your songs."  
  
He hugged me even tighter.   
  
"You won't ever lose to yourself. And you won't ever lose yourself."  
  
I looked at the window and at that moment, the clouds began to part. The sun's rays were trying to go through in spurts despite all the heavy clouds, but still it persisted.  
  
The sun can't ever stop shining.   
  
It will try to touch everything and embrace everything.  
  
It has much to give.  
  
And it doesn't mind sharing.  
  
Perception is a mentality.  
  
Action is reality.  
  
Though I know it is impossible to make the two eclipse, I'll try my hardest for people to see everything wonderful about this world.   
  
For I thought the world was ugly and cruel too, but I didn't see it that way anymore.  
  
Not only because I have Tatsuha, Riki, and everyone that I love.  
  
But that I try to make what everyone said was impossible, possible.  
  
I'll make whatever dream I have a tangible reality because that's the only way I can live.  
  
I told Tatsuha with a wide smile on my face,   
  
"The sun has lasted for ages. I want to last much longer than that.  
  
I can't stop.  
  
I'm addicted to wanting more. To doing more.  
  
To being more.  
  
To reach every crevice of myself until the darkness is gone."  
  
Tsuzuku...  
  
--  
  
Author's note: I made this fic because for my birthday last week. I make fics, but this one was for myself, to record this day's events. I chose Ryuichi out of all the characters I had in mind because I can never seem to go wrong with him. He is the one I am most like (though my polite personality is Sumeragi Subaru). Ryuichi acts like a child, but he knows EXACTLY what is going on. Then, he covers the remark with some nonsense so that he's not found out. (That's why I can see him and Touma as equals not only as bandmates, but as previous lovers. Touma doesn't waste his time. Ryuichi doesn't waste his efforts.)  
  
He is one of the greatest characters I've ever come across, no matter how many times I've heard people say he's such a stereotype. I disagree with this, but then I'm very personal when it comes to him. Kappei Yamaguchi may have been the reason I went into Gravitation, but Ryuichi was the reason why I stayed and finished and fell in love over and over and over...  
  
So, I presented this fic to you. It is what I learned today about life.  
  
Another poem given to you also. I noticed the one of the things that bothered me about my lyrics for Nittle Grasper's songs. Ryuichi always talked about light. Now I know.   
  
Ah, Ryuichi. A wonderful character. I wish to be as confident as him someday. Shuichi is where I am next to all the great writers I always hear or read from...Isabella Kraft-sama. Mada, todokenai.  
  
But more than that, I made Ryuichi older and after the whole Nagareboshi series because he already found what he's singing for and why. Now, I wanted this little fic to talk about now Tatsuha being the one to encourage him.  
  
Thank you for reading. And thank you to those I've converted to Gravi. (Yea~!) As well as those who have stuck it out with me. I am most happy when I can share what I'm passionately in love with.  
  
Most of all, thank you to Adri and Teresa. This fic is for you. You should know why. ^_^  
  
Translation:  
  
"Akaku nureta yubisaki ni...  
  
Subete wa suna ni naru...Shining make you cry..."  
  
"In my wet red fingertips...  
  
Everything becomes sand...Shining make you cry..." 


End file.
